Arguably, Durably, Endlessly
by LittleLongHairedOutlaw
Summary: She knows how it happened, how they came to be, but understanding is much more difficult. It is easier to simply glory in the beauty of it. (Femlock AU)
1. 1

She is never quite sure just how it worked out like this. She can go through it, step by step in her memory, and still not reach a definitive answer - and she's tried, no doubt about that. It seems so important to know, to understand how she was so fortunate. To figure out what, exactly, the action or series of actions was that meant she deserves this.

There were misunderstandings, miscommunication. And no, she never felt like _that_ for Miss Adler, though it was suspected by some. There were tragedies, faked and real. A dive off of a roof, though she never hit the ground. A bullet in her chest and it was all a world of pain, and she couldn't breathe but she knew that she couldn't let go either. It was close, so very close.

She pushes the memory from her mind, preferring not to dwell on the moment she'd stopped fighting and felt herself slipping away. It seemed right, the only reasonable response. What place was there left for her, after all? But there was that voice, whispering softly, and for that voice alone she was able to hold on.

(The voice, its breath ghosting over her cheek, both words and sense an anchor, holding her. The voice needed a safeguard, someone to watch out, even in secret. She could never forgive herself, were something to happen, whether or not she were there.)

It wasn't righted right away. There was much more to get through. Yet, that bullet changed the game and made the ending so much more tangible.

She can never let herself forget the moment when all of the pieces fell into place, their fingers intertwined, her eyes stinging with the force of the tears that she was too proud to let herself cry. (They slipped through, trickling in rivulets down her cheeks, and she can still feel them, in moments like this, when she remembers.) It is too important, too precious. And she can live it forever though there is no need to thanks to the reality she is in.

Sherlock Holmes smiles across the table at Josephine Watson, who doesn't see her being quite taken up with a running commentary of the newspaper headlines. It is all irrelevant, unimportant, nothing that could possibly have an impact on them. But her voice is music, filling her veins and swelling her heart and she could set it to the violin. She has, already, more times than she count, each composition infinitely precious for all that it represents.

Jo looks up, catching her eye and smiling, the words dying on her tongue. And everything is just beautiful.


	2. 2

Just to be close to her, to exist together in the same space. That's all she wants, all she's wanted for a long time. The rest is nice - the soft touches, the kisses. But the closeness, it's the closeness that she craves, their bodies entwined, simply existing. No need for words or anything more, just the feel of her. That's enough.

She thought she'd die from the longing, from the aching desperation that strangled every breath. She was Away when it came over her, all in a wave, Dead yet Not Dead yet Maybe Dying. There was too much, altogether too much. Then she was Back and she wished to be dead so as not to see the wedding unfolding before her eyes.

The heroin coursing through her veins dulled it, gave her candlelit dances and the longed-for body pressed close. Yet, somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that it was not real, _could not_ be real. There had been a wedding, after all.

She lay in that sterile room, half in this world and half in the next, and the fingers twined with hers seemed a dream too. But such a blissful dream! Her eyes prickled at the sheer impossibility of it, tears that she was helpless to control trickling down her cheeks. The voice, the beautiful dreamt up voice, whispered gentle garbled words and stroked her hair and it felt real but it couldn't possibly be real.

(She has no memory of opening her eyes to that precious hazy face, and confessing her love. The morphine wiped it away, along with that first whispered answering confession of "I love you, too. And I was so blind, Sherlock. So blind". The lips that grazed her forehead, and the arms that ever so gently enfolded her exist as a half-remembered dream, infinitely precious and oddly intangible.)

There is no need, now, for dreams. Their usefulness has passed, in the face of the real thing.


End file.
